Enterprise desktop management is one of the most challenging tasks for Information Technology (IT) departments of large organizations today. A typical IT department needs to manage, protect, and distribute software updates and modifications, upgrade operating systems and applications, as well as be able to back up and restore the user's data, applications and settings on demand. One significant issue for IT departments involves the complexity of managing a large number of different desktop instances that exist on the computers of various enterprise users. The sheer number of computers to manage; the proliferation of operating system (OS) images and applications; and the complex set of operations, such as deployment, provisioning, patching, upgrading, installing and managing applications, performing backup and restore operations, compliance testing, troubleshooting and re-imaging; all make IT responsibilities a very challenging task. To compound these difficulties, today's enterprises are often dispersed over multiple geographic locations and the use of Local Area Networks (LANs) connected over one or more Wide Area Networks (WANs) with variable bandwidths and latencies is a serious barrier to providing efficient desktop management without sacrificing end user experience.
There exist a number of backup and recovery solutions that are often utilized by IT departments of large organizations. These backup solutions typically include functions for copying and archiving computer data so that it may be used to restore the original data after a loss event. For example, some backup software running on each end user's computer may periodically backup that user's data (e.g., documents, images, emails, etc.) to a central storage location, which may itself be replicated. If a user's computer subsequently breaks or malfunctions, the user's data could then be retrieved from the central storage location and provided to the user on a new or repaired device.
While these backup and recovery solutions have helped IT departments manage employee data, a number of inefficiencies remain in this space. For example, it is often difficult for IT to predict the storage capacity and performance requirements that are needed to implement an ongoing backup and recovery solution. The centralization and on-going synchronization of thousands of images of users' computers might have a major effect on the enterprise resources. For example, the enterprise network should have enough allocated bandwidth to complete these operations within a reasonable timeframe, and storage should have both allocated capacity to store the snapshots of the images, as well as allocated input/output operations per second (IOPS) for timely and predictable completion times.
Some enterprises use resource calculators or other tools to aid the planning phase. These types of tools typically take into account numerous parameters such as the number of endpoint devices, the network topology, estimated image size, bandwidth and storage parameters, and attempt to produce an estimation of the time required to complete the centralization, average centralizations per week, and potential storage and network bottlenecks that might occur if certain thresholds are not met. However, the estimates of such resource planning tools are often inaccurate due to using generic assumptions and their heuristic nature. In light of these factors and other deficiencies, a more accurate and efficient system for predicting storage capacity and performance requirements is desirable.